Cossacks

The Cossacks are Slavic democratic and self-governing communities who reside in the Don region, Ural, Terek, and Kuban in Russia and in parts of the Ukraine. The cossacks claimed that they originated with the barbaric Khazars of the Middle Ages, and they allied with the Russian Empire in order to colonize the steppes. The cossacks launched several failed uprisings against the Russian government, but they would become the most rigorous soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army, receiving weapons and supplies for their communities. The cossacks were used as policemen by the regime, suppressing the revolutionary movement from 1905 to 1907 and preventing pogroms. The cossacks supported the White Army against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, leading to the "decossackization" policy of the Soviet Union, and cossacks were wiped out until the 1990s. In 2010, cossacks began to be recognized as an ethnic group in Russia.